A superb early mezzotint portrait of the English statesman Thomas Townshend, Viscount Sydney, an influential supporter of the plan to send the First Fleet to Botany Bay, and for whom Sydney Cove was named by Governor Phillip.

A superb early mezzotint portrait of the English statesman Thomas Townshend, Viscount Sydney, an influential supporter of the plan to send the First Fleet to Botany Bay, and for whom Sydney Cove was named by Governor Phillip.

Sydney, as Home Secretary in Pitt's government, was given the task of devising a plan for settling convicts at Botany Bay, and it was his address to the Commissioners of the Treasury in August 1786 which provided the detailed plan for the establishment of the colony, with details of the number of convicts and transports, the marines, disciplinary measures, supplies and livestock, and the foundations of government itself. Sydney was particularly inspired by his interviews with James Matra, the seaman of American origin who sailed on Cook's first voyage (at that time named Magra). Matra proposed settling American loyalists in New South Wales; however, by the time of Sydney's proposal to Treasury the loyalists had been dropped from the project and Botany Bay was intended solely as a penal colony. When Phillip finally decided to establish the settlement at Port Jackson, rather than Botany Bay, he paid the Home Secretary the compliment of naming Sydney after him.

This fine portrait is accompanied by a folio-sized engraved genealogical sheet entitled "A Genealogical Table of the Noble Family of Townshend, Baron Sydney".